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Education, 
and not 
Instruction 



By 

Corliss 

Fitz Randolph 























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EDUCATION, AND NOT INSTRUCTION 



An Address Delivered at the Celebration of 

the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the 

Founding of Salem College, at 

Salem, West Virginia, 

June 12, 1913 



By 
CORLISS FITZ RANDOLPH 



Pre.s of the American Sabbath Tract Society, Plainfield, N. J. 
1913 






Copyrighted, 1914, by 
Corliss Fitz Randolph 



FEB 6 1914 



/ 

©CI.A361898 



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Education, and Not Instruction. 

By Corliss Fitz Randolph. 

A THOUSAND years ago, there swept 
r\ out of the chilling regions of the 
north, down along the coast of Scan- 
dinavia, across the waters of the Ger- 
man Ocean, from the land of the 
Vikings, a mighty fleet of upwards 
of 700 vessels and 40,000 fierce war- 
riors. The flag-ship, named the Drag- 
on, was fashioned from ancient oaks that 
had defied the icy blasts of the storm- 
swept mountains where they grew, into 
the form of a dragon. She flew a sin- 
gle cross-rigged sail of immense sweep 
and ornamented with broad stripes of 
brilliant blue, scarlet, and green and was 
equipped with half a hundred pairs of oars, 
some thirty feet in length, and manned by 
at least four stalwart seamen to each oar. 
The huge dragon's head at the prow was 
covered with shining gold, and the stern, 
ending in a dragon's tail of corresponding 
proportions, was ornamented in a similar 
manner. The Dragon alone carried a 
crew, 700 strong. Each soldier bore 
? shield which reached from above the 



head well down toward the knees, and pro- 
tected all the vital parts of the body. With 
their shields, their owners had constructed 
a border all around the outside of their 
ship, by hanging them in a row at the top 
of the hull, so that they overlapped each 
other, alternating yellow and black, and 
presenting a highly picturesque appear- 
ance. 

The other vessels of the fleet, though 
smaller, were similarly constructed and 
similarly equipped, and as their crews bent 
to their oars or set the bellying sails, they 
chanted their ancient Sagas, reciting vic- 
tories of the past and the glories of other 
days ; or they sang of the mighty Thor and 
the all-powerful god, Odin, — the long- 
bearded Thunderer, Father of Victory, 
God of Hosts, and Father of All. As the 
chorus of 40,000 lusty voices, commingled 
with the strains of a thousand harps, was 
caught on high by the swift winds that 
bore them on their martial way, they were 
all blended into one mighty, exultant paean 
of confident victory in impending mortal 
conflict, such as to mock the merciless 
clamour of hungry ocean's roar in her 
most threatening mood. 



On the foredeck of the imposing Dragon, 
stood the commander of the fleet, of giant 
stature and kingly mould. Across his 
massive forehead ran an ornamental gold 
band, set with gems as flashing and as 
priceless as ever graced the diadems of the 
far-famed rulers of Golconda. His long, 
yellow hair, fair as mellow sunshine, fell 
upon his broad shoulders, and his full 
beard, tawny as a lion's mane, dropped half 
way to his girdle. His face and hands 
were bronzed from long exposure to storm 
and wind. His eyes, a deep, dark blue, in 
whose depths lurked smouldering fires of 
passion, gave token of a determination and 
will that brooked no defeat; while through 
his veins coursed a torrent of such life- 
giving blood as irresistingly impels the 
victor of a thousand bloody battles to 
plunge into a final struggle of life and death. 

He was clad in bright-blue knee- 
breeches, with gold-embroidered shoes, 
made from walrus-skin, that reached more 
than half way to his knees. The inter- 
vening space between the shoe-tops and 
knee-breeches was covered with heavy 
bands of richly coloured silk. About his 
body was a shirt-like garment of red silk, 



with long sleeves, which fellj below his 
girdle and effectually concealed the indis- 
pensable coat of mail. At his side hung a 
long broadsword of shining, highly-tem- 
pered steel, thickly encrusted with silver 
ornaments, but, notwithstanding, betoken- 
ing many a deadly encounter. Over all, 
was thrown a heavy fur cape, lined with 
velvet of a royal purple hue, which reached 
to his shoe-tops, and was fastened at the 
throat with a richly engraved golden clasp ; 
and at his feet lay a battle-axe of such size 
and weight as might well try the strength 
of the arm of Hercules himself. 

Thus he stood, bareheaded, the wind 
playing with his hair, with his arms fold- 
ed tightly across his chest, and buried in 
thought, contemplating, with a certain su- 
preme satisfaction, his vast fleet of battle- 
ships, followed in their wake by several 
hundreds of transports, bearing supplies of 
food, tents, horses, — everything required 
to equip and sustain so mighty an army on 
land and sea for months. Not Solomon 
with all his train of oriental splendour ; nor 
Alexander, conqueror of worlds; nor Jul- 
ius Caesar, builder of empires; nor Na- 
poleon Buonaparte, who made a chess- 



board of the continent of Europe and 
pawns of her crowned heads, ever saw 
such a martial display. Not all the gal- 
leys of Greece, nor all the ships that sail- 
ed the Spanish Main, nor yet the Invincible 
Armada, ever presented such a display of 
naval power, moving with so irresistible 
a sweep, and pregnant with as far-reaching 
possibilities. 

This was Hrolf, or Rollo, the last of the 
Vikings, going forth, primarily to make 
war upon the ancient Gallic domains of 
imperial Caesar, but in reality to set in 
motion forces that were to persist with an 
accelerating momentum for a thousand 
years, and bear manifold blessings to un- 
told generations. As he stood in 
silent meditation, we may not know 
how far the Muse of History un- 
rolled her tempting scroll to his im- 
patient eyes, nor how far his prevision 
may have penetrated the misty prospect 
before him. To what extent his ambitions 
may have been luring him to world-con- 
quest, it will probably never be given us to 
know. 

The picture here sketched is realistic 
to the last detail. The Bayeaux Tap- 



estry, the Sagas, and the ruins of the 
long, fleeting, dead past, with their runic 
inscriptions, and their mute, material evi- 
dences of the life and warfare of this peo- 
ple, bear ample testimony of that fact. But 
of the possible Napoleonic dreams of this 
heathen demigod as he fared forth to war, 
history is either strangely silent, or 
answers back in accents of hollow mock- 
ery. Yet, upon a shred of the tottering 
imperial realm which Charlemagne had 
erected from the dying embers of 
the Gallic Roman Empire, this pagan 
barbarian, of such giant physique that 
no horse could be found powerful 
enough to carry him, saturated with 
the spirit of the Norse theology of Thor 
and Odin, was to cause to rise yet another 
empire, dedicated to Christianity, in spirit as 
in letter, to law and order, as well as life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and 
singularly free from avarice and dishon- 
esty, whose national life was to endure 
throughout an entire millennial epoch and 
then enter upon another with a virility and 
spirit of perseverance such as to augur 
prosperity for its future. 

He was projecting himself into western 



European civilization about the beginning 
of the period known in the history of learn- 
ing as the age of Scholasticism. A little 
more than a century before, Charlemagne 
had established monastic schools in France 
and made what was probably the first at- 
tempt in the history of the world to pro- 
vide universal free primary education, and 
to establish free higher schools. This 
spirit the new ruler speedily caught, 
and transmitted to his successors. About 
a century and a half after Hrolf had 
established himself in that part of France 
that came to be known as Normandy, 
his grandson in the seventh generation 
of descent, William the Conqueror, ac- 
companied by his immediate family, be- 
sides his uncles, cousins, and others of his 
numerous kindred, crossed the channel 
which divided Normandy from the southern 
part of England, crushed the English army 
under Harold, killed their leader at the 
Battle of Hastings, and reorganized the 
government of the newly conquered soil. 
Scarcely was the celebrated Domesday 
Book engrossed, before schools and uni- 
versities sprang up. The two great ancient 
universities of Cambridge and Oxford were 



founded under Norman influence ; and be- 
tween the Conquest and the death of King 
John, there were established five hundred 
and fifty-seven schools in England. The 
spirit of education marked the Conqueror's 
family circle no less than the State. His 
son, Henry Beauclerc, was trained in the 
sciences ; as were Henry II, and his three 
sons, of whom Richard, the eldest, was a 
poet. 

Now awoke the genius of religious 
and political freedom. In the veins 
of Robert the Bruce, liberator of 
Scotland, ran the blood of this Vik- 
ing king; and when the Puritan Ref- 
ormation arose in England and the Pil- 
grims, after a career of varying fortune 
in a foreign land, finally found rest on the 
bleak shores of New England, there, too, 
was found the fruit of the loins 
of the regal Norseman ; and when, 
after a hundred and fifty years more 
had passed away and Lexington, Con- 
cord, and Bunker Hill called for a 
military commander of heroic stature 
to lead the Colonial armies in their 
struggle for freedom from oppression, 
it was another descendant of the royal 



giant of the north that heard the 
cry and rode away from his peaceful 
Virginian plantation to lead to victory a 
people who were to found another govern- 
ment, which in the short space of a century 
and a quarter, was to share with the proud 
Briton, her cousin of Norse ancestry, the 
boast that the sun never sets on her pos- 
sessions, and to become the mighty empire 
of the west, to be reckoned with by the 
great powers of the world, and to be 
known and read of by all men, of all na- 
tions of the earth. 

And, to carry the story to its final, logical 
issue, when the village of Salem was 
founded in the wilderness of the foot-hills 
of the Alleghany Mountains some hun- 
dred and twenty years ago, by a band of 
courageous spirits, who sought a new home 
in this strange, wild country, where they 
might enter upon the heritage bequeathed 
to them by Plymouth Rock and the Magna 
Charta of '76, that triumphal progress was 
led by another captain, the streams of 
whose life current had their source in the 
great heart- fount of the mighty son of Thor. 

It has already been observed that no 
sooner had the sturdy Norseman established 



his home in France and passed under Chris- 
tian sway and embraced that faith, than 
he became a great humanizing force. Awak- 
ened from her apathy by his influence, 
Christianity became a vi'talistic power of 
itself. He crystallized the nascent humani- 
tarian spirit of France inito the great Uni- 
versity of Paris. He quickened and gave 
being to the movement which culminated 
in the English Renaissance, and made the 
Elizabethan period the pride and glory of 
English letters. He fostered organized 
law. He encouraged, and helped to make 
a living reality of civil and religious free- 
dom throughout the entire English-speak- 
ing world, and placed the peoples using 
that language in a position where, today, 
they practically hold the balance of power 
among the nations of the earth. At the 
close of the recent war between Russia and 
Japan, it was not the belligerents who made 
the treaty of peace. The President of the 
United States of America brought the op- 
posing powers together on the neutral foot- 
ing of our hospitable shores, and the Prime 
Minister of England, tactful but unyield- 
ing, dictated the terms which ended that 
bloody struggle. 



The beneficent force that has worked 
out so many other great deeds of service 
for modern civilization, has made, in this 
great beloved country of ours, the best sys- 
tem of free public education that the world 
has ever known. It was the same benign 
influence that inspired the American people 
with the exalted opinion of higher edu- 
cation that has characterized them from 
the very inception of William and Mary 
College to the present generation. And if 
we stop and consider that the Norseman 
was Germanic before he was Norse, we 
may readily perceive that the very dynamic 
spirit that inspired him to become the 
patron of education in France, Great 
Britain, the United States, Canada, and 
Australia, likewise moved others to place 
education upon the firm, scientific footing 
it holds throughout Germanic, or central, 
Europe today. Indeed, I may venture to 
remark in passing, that Frederick the 
Great, Bismarck the Iron Chancellor, and 
Field Marshal Von Moltke, all were but 
Vikings of the nineteenth century. When, 
a few years ago, on a dreary, stormy day 
in winter, in company with a fellow coun- 
tryman of theirs on a railroad train, I 



passed the snow-clad tomb and former 
home of Bismarck, the Sphinx of Europe, 
the man of whom it was said he could be 
silent in seven languages, I could but ob- 
serve how fittingly both his former habita- 
tion and his last resting-place connoted the 
ancient fierce spirit of the North, so well 
exemplified in our Viking hero. Nor could 
I fail to observe the spirit of almost filial 
veneration and respect which my compan- 
ion displayed as we swept by this cold and 
bleak German Valhalla. 

Thus, the hand that a thousand years ago 
laid such a mighty grip upon west central 
Europe and inspired a nascent civilization 
to spring into a living power for uplift and 
culture, for progress and righteousness, is 
today erecting the humble chapel on the 
countryside and piling up massive masonry 
into lofty cathedrals in splendid cities ; is 
dotting this fair country of ours with rural 
schools and small colleges as well as with 
great busy school-hives for the children of 
the populous commercial and manufacturing 
centres, and with the magnificent universi- 
ties which grace American soil from Atlan- 
tic to Pacific shore; and from them all is- 
sues the same clarion voice that called the 



fierce warriors of the North to conflict with 
the powers of darkness, still calling from 
the misty past upon all — men, women and 
children, everywhere — to the worship and 
adoration of their Maker, and all the chil- 
dren, youth, and young men and young 
women of the land to rally around the ban- 
ner of enlightenment and avail themselves 
of opportunities for acquiring an education 
such as have never before been offered in 
the history of the world. 

But what is an education? Well may 
we ask this question ; it has been asked for 
thousands of years, and curiously enough, 
the answer has always been the same. 
True, in many, perhaps all, ages, there have 
been those who have fancied that they re- 
sponded in other tones, and some have ac- 
tually said other things. But did you ever 
stop to think that a given object appears 
different to different people; that much, 
and sometimes everything, depends upon 
the point of view ? It makes all the differ- 
ence imaginable whether one looks at the 
world from the depths of a narrow valley, 
or from the summit of a high mountain. 
The giant oak, which lifts its head in tow- 
ering majesty when one stands in its im- 

13 



mediate presence, sinks into utter insignifi- 
cance when seen in distant perspective. 
Even the course of a mighty river, with all 
its eddies and counter currents, might 
easily be misjudged by one beholding it for 
the first time. 

The prophet, the real seer, whether it be 
in religion, education, or State, is he who, 
from the loftiest peak, surveys the prospect 
before him without aberration of sight — 
without the illusion of foreshortening or 
mirage. So, in this discussion, let us lis- 
ten to the voices of men who stand upon 
the mountain tops of human history and 
attainment. Three centuries before the 
Christian Era began, Plato said : 

"A good education is that which gives to the 
body and soul all the perfection of which they 
are capable." 

One might fairly say that this declara- 
tion from the lips of a pagan sage really 
embodies the philosophy of Moses and the 
wisdom of Solomon — the magi of the an- 
cient Hebrews. Two thousand years af- 
terward, Milton, whose Paradise Lost, no 
less than his theological disputations, re- 
moves him wholly from the suspicion of 
undue pagan influence, in his memorable 

14 



letter to his friend Hartlieb on the subject 
of Education, amplified Plato's dictum into 
the following: 

"I call, therefore, a complete and generous 
education, that which fits a man to perform 
justly, skillfully, and magnanimously, all the 
offices, both private and public, of peace and 
war." 

The modern definition that "education is 
fitting oneself to one's environment," while 
cryptic in its sound, and possibly in its in- 
tended meaning, is really Plato stated in 
fewer words, but without the directness 
and simplicity of the latter. Some 
modern writers distinguish carefully be- 
tween education and instruction. Ac- 
cording to these authorities, education is, 
in brief, essentially the result of all the 
conscious influences which impinge upon 
and shape personal character; and instruc- 
tion, in similar general terms, is what we 
are wont to call "schooling." In other words, 
education is the residuum of all one's ex- 
periences of life, or in short, individual 
character; while instruction is what we 
have been accustomed to call education, — 
"book-learning," if you will pardon so 
homely a term. 

Now, education, from the standpoint of 

IS 



the practical educator, consists in the re- 
sult of all the influences which he may be 
able to bring to bear to give his pupils as 
much as possible of the common stock of 
knowledge essential for intelligent and ap- 
preciative conduct of life. This includes, 
in the main, two important factors ; name- 
ly, the curriculum and the personality of 
the instructor. Of course, the stu- 
dent's associations with his fellows is 
a third, not unimportant, consideration. 
With particular reference to this view of 
the question, education is classified as 
physical, intellectual, and spiritual; and 
again as utilitarian and cultural. The 
former of these two classifications is log- 
ical and scientific, while the latter is arti- 
ficial and sophistical. 

In our threefold classification of educa- 
tion, naturally the first consideration is 
physical. The body is the temple of our 
spirit, and the home of our intellect. Nay, 
more, it is the medium through which we 
are able to use our spirit and intellect as it 
was designed that they should be used; 
and upon the careful development of the 
body into symmetrical, physical manhood 
and womanhood, depends the fulfillment of 

16 



the hopes and obligations incurred by our 
spiritual and intellectual being — the moral 
and ethical manifestations of our existence. 

Did it ever occur to you that, aside from 
the ten precepts of the Decalogue, essen- 
tially the entire Mosaic law pertained to 
the physical well-being of the Hebrews? 
Not only that, but therein may be found a 
code of sanitary regulations, which, if rig- 
idly enforced today among the entire citi- 
zen body of the nation, would inure greatly 
the physical and social welfare of human- 
ity, irrespective of race, colour, or creed of 
religious faith. 

The Spartan code of training directed its 
entire aim toward physical development, 
and by the unrelenting enforcement of its 
rules produced results that have made the 
history of Lacedasmonia famous for all 
time. This code recognized a fundamen- 
tal truth, in that if society wants to per- 
petuate the human species, it must insist 
upon the rigorous enforcement of certain 
sanitary canons for the care of the body. 
No nation of physical weaklings ever en- 
dures, or attains distinction. The recogni- 
tion of this inexorable, basic mandate of 
nature by savage and barbaric peoples is 

17 



the real explanation of certain of their in- 
human practices with reference to the ex- 
posure and destruction of weak children. 
It is but the practical application of the 
stern edict of the "survival of the fittest," 
or "natural selection," as modern scientists 
have pointed out, by means of which nature 
develops and perpetuates certain types of 
both animate and inanimate creation. It 
is of vastly more importance that a man 
shall have the necessary strength and en- 
durance to use carpenter's tools, than that 
he should have the skill to use them. He 
may have the cunning and skill to fashion 
the rarest examples of his craft, but if he 
have not the strength to use the tools neces- 
sary to produce them, his skill is of no avail. 
Then, aside from the bald question of 
developing mere brute strength, there are 
certain principles of sanitation and health 
which need to be taught as of divine ori- 
gin, since upon their intelligent observance 
depends the freedom of the race from the 
bondage of disease and premature decay. 
The widespread interest in what is now 
termed eugenics, augurs well for a sane, 
efficient physical discipline. 

By intellectual education, we mean the 
development of our general intelligence. 

18 



This includes not simply the acquisition of 
that body of knowledge which the history 
of civilization has shown to constitute the 
essence of all that is rich and ennobling in 
human experience, but also the de- 
velopment of a discerning judgment 
by which to classify and interpret it. 
This body of knowledge, and its ad- 
equate interpretation and classification, 
constitute what is known as a liberal edu- 
cation, and is to be carefully differentiated 
from what is purely technical or profes- 
sional. The liberal education is the great 
chief corner-stone of enlightened civiliza- 
tion. Plato, in his Republic, which was 
really the first scientific treatise on this 
subject, demanded little beyond what we 
should call secondary education. Of its 
higher form, he required a little of ad- 
vanced mathematics (including astron- 
omy), and philosophy. Of literature, as 
we know it, there was none. Of course, 
the poems of Homer were familiar to every 
one, just as certain traditions of the Jews 
are familiar to every Hebrew, and as the 
Nibehingenlied was familiar in every 
household in Germany in the Dark 
Ages. But at that time, Homer's poems 
were mere folklore, a national tradition, and 



19 



had not yet risen to the dignity of pure lit- 
erature. But from these matchless Homeric 
legends ; from the historical, philosophical 
discussions of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, 
and their followers and successors; from 
the spirit of mountains and valleys, their 
purpling plains and chaste blue seas ; from 
their wars, from victory, from defeat; 
from their sunny skies and the joyous life 
they led in the clear, pure, rarefied atmos- 
phere of sunny Hellas, the Greeks created 
literature, — a great, peerless body of it, — 
into which they breathed their national life 
and spirit, and even the whole sum of hu- 
man existence — that which, next after the 
Bible, is the best literature the world has 
ever known. It palpitates with their hearts' 
blood; it is exuberant with the joys of liv- 
ing; and reeks with the real experiences 
(even to their inmost thoughts) of actual, 
God-made men and women. It is the 
fountainhead, — the great source, — from 
which all modern literature has been 
drawn. 

The Romans, who taught Greek litera- 
ture in their schools, produced a literature 
of their own, fashioned after that of the 
Greek; they developed and organized juris- 
prudence and the science of government; 



and, finally, before our very eyes, as it were, 
they unrolled a splendid panorama, pictur- 
ing forth the actual production and de- 
velopment of a stately, sonorous tongue, 
whose acquisition is sought today by a 
greater aggregation of people than spoke 
it when, at the height of her Empire, 
Rome's mightiest legions thronged forth to 
universal victory. Milton, the blind bard 
of England's Commonwealth, whose poet- 
ical genius is to the English language what 
Vergil's was to the Latin, and Dante's 
to the Italian,— a classical scholar of 
marvelous attainment, — enunciated a dic- 
tum to the effect that Greek and Latin were 
the only languages of enlightenment, and 
urged that they be acquired not merely for 
the sake of the pure literature which they 
embodied, but that at least some of the 
technical and professional subjects, includ- 
ing agriculture and architecture, might be 
studied at their original sources. 1 

i. It is interesting to note that Vitruvius is still 
regarded as an authority on architecture. The stand- 
ard modern edition is that edited by Rose (Leipzig, 
1880). The standard English translation is that edited 
by Gwilt (London, 1826; reprinted 1S74). , And since 
this address has been put into type, there has appeared 
an English translation of the agricultural treatises ot 
Cato and Varro entitled, Roman Farm Management 
The Treatises of Cato and Varro Done Into hnglisn 
With Notes of Modem Instances. By A Virginia 
Farmer (New York, 1913)- 

21 



Perhaps in all the maddening vortex of 
our complex modern life, there is no greater 
feat of daily occurrence than that of edit- 
ing successfully a great metropolitan daily 
newspaper. Here is gathered together, in 
the short space of a few hours, all the 
news of interest that has just transpired 
throughout the world. Swift express 
trains, ships of the air, ocean cables, the 
telephone carrying the sound of the human 
voice for a thousand miles, and wireless 
telegraphy — that greatest of all the great 
miracles of modern times — are laid under 
tribute to yield up their secrets from the 
closets of the uttermost hidden parts of 
the earth, to be proclaimed from the house- 
tops of all the broad highways of civiliza- 
tion. A vast army of tens of thousands 
of tireless workers keep up a steady flow 
of the never-ending streams of intelligence, 
with all their tremendous volume, through 
all these multifarious channels. The news 
ranges all the way from the petty theft of a 
cowardly, clumsy sneak-thief or pickpocket, 
to the loss of millions through the most dar- 
ing and skillful machinations of the experi- 
enced embezzler ; from petty graft in a 
country village to the widespread ramifica- 



(tions of the artful designs of the most cun- 
ning diplomatists and statesmen of the 
Great Powers plotting the dismemberment 
of a decaying empire; from the election of 
a justice of the peace at the mountain cross- 
roads of Tennessee to the coronation of a 
king, or the marriage of a princess of the 
realm; from a common street brawl to the 
bloody struggle of the battlefield where the 
fate of nations hangs in a balance ; from a 
hod-carrier tumbling from a ladder under 
the weight of a load of bricks, with a 
broken leg, to the wreck of a floating 
ocean-palace at the cost of a thousand lives ; 
from the childish games of a tiny kinder- 
garten to the imposing commencement ex- 
ercises of a great university; from the 
publication of a new spelling-book in Au- 
gusta, Maine, to the discovery, in the sands 
of Egypt, of ancient papyri containing the 
lost plays of Menander; from the tax- 
budget of a small suburban town to the 
finances of two worlds; from digging a 
ditch for a small water main in a side street 
of a mere rustic hamlet to the building of 
the Panama Canal. All these and ten thou- 
sand other happenings and transactions 
with a million details, all come pouring into 

23 



the office of an editor of such a newspaper, 
and he must pass judgment upon their rel- 
ative importance and their availability for 
his use, oftentimes in the twinkling of an 
eye. Can you conceive of a more complex 
or a more difficult task? A careful student 
of modern life, writing a few years ago, 
said that if it were possible for us to send 
to another planet some one thing which 
would exemplify our civilization and pres- 
ent-day attainments, he would select either 
an encyclopaedia or a great daily newspaper. 

What sort of man, then, is required to 
produce such a newspaper? This coun- 
try has produced many men who have at- 
tained distinction in that field of activity. 
But among them all, few, if any, attained 
greater renown than Charles A. Dana, for 
so many years the editor of the New York 
Sun. Whatever opinion one may enter- 
tain of Mr. Dana's personal views of mat- 
ters politic, ethical, or otherwise, no one 
questions his ability as an editor. The 
purely intellectual quality of his pen has 
seldom been surpassed, and the sanity and 
accuracy of his news columns were all but 
perfect. Surely, if there has ever been an 
American newspaper man qualified to 

24 



judge the attributes of a great editor, Mr. 
Dana was such an authority. A very few 
years before his death, he was invited to 
deliver a series of lectures upon journalism 
before the students of Union College. In 
the course of one of these lectures, while 
discussing the qualifications that an editor 
should have, he said: 

"I am myself a partisan of the strict old- 
fashioned classical education. The man who 
knows Greek and Latin, and knows it — I don't 
me'an who has read six books of Vergil for a 
college examination, but the man who can pick 
up Vergil or Tacitus without going to the dic- 
tionary, and the man who can read the Iliad in 
Greek without boggling — and if he can read 
Aristotle and Plato, all the better — and is fa- 
miliar with the English Bible, that man can be 
trusted to edit a newspaper." 

Just what did Mr. Dana mean? 
Merely this : That the man who is thus fa- 
miliar with this body of literature, small 
though it may appear, but which is the 
very essence of polite letters, has not only 
compassed the entire range of human ex- 
perience, and become well versed in the 
laws of God and man, but in addition, has 
caught something of the spirit of intel- 
lectual and political freedom of the Greeks ; 
something of the genius and loftiness of 

25 



their intellectual and spiritual attainment, 
and of their poetry and music and song, 
— in short, of the fine art of living; who 
has also caught something of the spirit of 
that national pride and patriotism which 
culminated in the Republic upon which 
Rome founded her great world-em- 
pire. Again, he has caught something 
of the spirit of simple faith in Jehovah 
and the mysticism which made the Chil- 
dren of Israel a chosen people, maintain- 
ing their identity thousands of years 
until they produced the Christ, and 
then, despite their rejection of the 
Messiah, remaining intact two thousand 
years longer, though wanderers upon 
the face of the earth ; and who final- 
ly, through the King James interpre- 
tation of the records of this eastern mysti- 
cism, has caught something of the Norse 
spirit which has transmuted Christianity 
from a religion of empty form, into 
which it had degenerated, into a living, 
moving faith, which has rescued Christen- 
dom from the terrors of the Dark Ages, 
and founded empires, erected temples to 
the living God, placed the Bible in every 
home, established universal education for all 

26 



classes of the State, and made civil and re- 
ligious liberty a living- verity, — such a man 
might well be trusted to edit a newspaper. 

Already I have essentially defined the 
third aspect of education, or spiritual de- 
velopment, along with the intellectual. And 
that was well-nigh inevitable, for while 
academically, general intelligence, or intel- 
lectuality, is distinguished from spirituality, 
practically and logically they are insep- 
arable. For without spirituality, intellect 
becomes cold, and relentless, and merciless, 
devoid of the milk of human kindness, so 
wholly essential to human life. Without 
spirituality, intellect becomes a mere 
mechanism, an automaton, logical but life- 
less. It is spirituality that enables a mu- 
sician to transform mere atmospheric vi- 
bration into harmonies all but divine; it is 
spirituality that enables an artist to dip his 
brush first into this pot of clay and then in- 
to that and cause a human face to spring 
from a sheet of dull, gray canvas, — a form 
so real in appearance as almost to seem to 
throb with emotion; it is spirituality that 
makes all the world akin, which makes us, 
all, each our brother's keeper ; that changes 
man from a mere calculating machine into 

27 



a creature made in the image of his Maker. 
Spirituality bears the same relation to in- 
tellect that the spark of protoplasm bears 
to the constituent chemical elements of a 
grain of wheat; together, they constitute a 
living organism, big with all the possibilities 
of the one mystery which has left baffled 
science in hopeless despair in all ages. 
Take the protoplasm away, and life vanishes 
beyond the ken of the most discerning 
chemist or astute philosopher, and leaves 
behind a mere speck of inanimate dust. 
When St. Paul said, "The letter killeth, but 
the spirit giveth life," he not only enunciat- 
ed a great theological and religious truth, 
but laid down a fundamental law of science 
as well. 

In the last analysis, spirituality is the 
very soul of all artistic and ethical and re- 
ligious symbolism. The legend of the 
golden harp of Orpheus, whose music not 
only impelled all the wild beasts of the 
jungle to follow, harmless, in his train, but 
which thrilled the hearts of the tall trees of 
the forest so that they bent their listening 
heads, and made the cold, lifeless stones 
to leap from the ground for very joy, is 
but the poetical expression of a spiritual 

28 



quality too real and too universal in hu- 
man experience ever to be gainsaid. From 
the faintest echoes of primordial life in 
the incipient dawn of creation, to the 
mightiest swell of the music of the spheres 
throughout all the transcendent symphony 
of eternity, music will ever touch, now in 
a sad, plaintive minor key, and now in ex- 
ulting, triumphant strains, all of the chords 
of that lute hidden away in the spiritual 
fibre of our nature; and whether it draws 
angels down into the abysmal depths of 
black despair, or bears mortals up to the 
great white throne, will depend upon the 
skill of the hand that sweeps the lyre, and 
the motif of the strains awakened by the 
deftness with which it touches the strings. 
Do you remember the ancient legend 
of the Lorelei sung by the poet Heine? 
The scene is laid at a well-known pass on 
the Rhine, where the river narrows between 
dangerous rocks, above which, on one side, 
arises a deep dark cavern, whence issue 
strange voices, or echoes. In the depths 
of this cavern was said to be the famed 
treasure of the Niebelungs; and, as the 
legend runs, in its mouth, sat a beautiful, 
sensuous maiden, who, by the music of her 

29 



harp, turned the heads of the fishermen as 
they passed by in their boats, and lured them 
to destruction on the black rocks beneath. 

Contrast with that picture, another. In 
all modern art, there is no more inspiring 
picture than that of Watts' Hope, which 
hangs in the celebrated Tate Gallery in 
London. A figure of a woman symbolical 
of humanity is seated on the top of the 
world, with bowed head and a commingled 
expression of faith and expectation upon 
her face, peeping from beneath her bandag- 
ed eyes, with ears strained to catch # the 
solitary note her hand can draw 
from the only remaining string of 
her broken lyre. A single star shines 
in the heavens. Amid conditions that 
might betoken only despair, a subtle 
divine effulgence of hope envelops all. 
So magnificent is the artist's conception 
of the picture, that no one, of whatever 
religious faith, or of no faith at all, can 
look upon it with a sympathetic eye with- 
out a thrill of exultation that testifies, in 
undeniable accents, to the spiritual nature 
of man. 

With reference to the classification of 
education as utilitarian and cultural, it may 

30 



be said that in the broadest and truest 
sense, all education is utilitarian, in that it 
seeks to render service of some kind; and 
in a corresponding sense all education is 
cultural. If all education be not both cul- 
tural and utilitarian in this sense, it falls 
far short of its mission. However, what 
is, nowadays, spoken of so glibly as utili- 
tarian education, is not education at all, in 
the best, or real, meaning of that term. 

Utilitarian education, so-called, is merely 
another name for a certain highly specialized 
technical training, pursued from a purely 
mercenary point of view. It is the com- 
mercialization, the prostitution, of educa- 
tion ; nay, even more, it is a mere travesty 
upon education. In other words it is a certain 
training, often little, if anything, else, than 
thie mere acquisition of a trade, sought 
to be dignified by calling it education, a 
training so tangible and so practical as to 
be turned into a bank account on demand, 
— a serious, but ludicrous, attempt to re- 
duce education to such terms that it can 
be sold by the yard or pound, so to speak. 

After all, it is an old story, an ancient 
will o' the wisp, in a new aspect, — the ever- 
recurring attempt to transmute a baser 

31 



metal into a finer, to turn brass into gold — 
the empty, shimmering phantom that has 
eluded the overcredulous alchemist, the 
crazy fanatic, and the cunning charlatan, 
in all ages, a tragic-comedy and a comic- 
tragedy, that will persist until a golden mil- 
lennium shall remove all ambition and ava- 
rice and want and vanity afar from mankind. 
This anomalous status of education is due 
to the fact that modern commercial and in- 
dustrial conditions have conspired to precip- 
itate a certain crisis that has forced hasty 
consideration; and our schools and institu- 
tions of learning, generally, flushed with 
the sparkling wine of an age which grovels 
before the shrine of material wealth, have 
all — from the kindergarten to the univer- 
sity — gone on a long debauch. 

Let us pause for a moment, and con- 
sider. When this broad, fair land was first 
settled by white men, its natural re- 
sources were boundless. The virgin for- 
ests, the natural fertility of the soil, and 
the vast mineral deposits of ready access, 
were all apparently inexhaustible. All that 
any one had to do to become possessed of 
any or all these riches was to reach forth 
his hand and take them. But as time pass- 

32 



ed, and civilization spread, and the popula- 
tion increased, these capacious storehouses, 
slowly at first, and then more rapidly, were 
exhausted. The soil was drained of its 
natural fertility, and the settler pushed his 
home further and further away from the 
eastern seaboard, until once more, as crops 
grew light and game scant, he again set 
the sails of his prairie schooner, and point- 
ed westward, until finally he could go no fur- 
ther, and civilization was everywhere. Vir- 
gin soil and untrod forests were no more. 
Timber, and coal, and iron, and all else 
that so short a time before had been as free 
as the wind that blows, had passed under the 
lock and key of vast commercial interests. 
Meanwhile, possibilities of fortunes such 
as the keepers of the fabled treasure houses 
of olden times never dreamed of, tempt- 
ed numberless men to daring conquests of 
trade and industrial activity — conquests in 
which the merchant of modest means and 
the individual manufacturer were merci- 
lessly coerced into yielding up their indi- 
viduality and their independence, and of- 
tentimes all their material resources, to 
satisfy the money barons' fierce brute thirst 
for conquest. 

33 



The introduction of improved machinery 
which could be manipulated by inexperi- 
enced help, drove skilled mechanics from 
the factory and workshop in throngs, until, 
after a few years, the manufacturers them- 
selves were appalled at the profound dearth 
of capable, intelligent help. They 
had unwittingly laid the ax at the root 
of their own fortunes. For, after all, 
there must be practical mechanics to or- 
ganize, install, and keep in repair and 
improve these high-bred automata of shin- 
ing steel. The former generation had vanish- 
ed and left no successors. The time-honour- 
ed apprentice system had shrunk away be- 
fore the advance of new methods. The 
old-time carpenter and cabinet-maker, and 
mason — mechanics capable of producing al- 
most anything that could be fashioned from 
wood and stone, had disappeared. So swift 
and sudden had been this metamorphosis, 
that industrial life awoke with a common 
start to a sense of the common peril. 

Nor was the manufacturer alone in his 
woe. The agriculturist, caught between 
the Scylla of unproductive farms, and the 
Charybdis of debt and increased cost of 
living, was at his wits' end to repair his 

.34 



broken fortunes. Hundreds of thousands 
of small tradesmen and mechanics, discour- 
aged and disheartened, — the former cun- 
ning of their hands either forgotten, or at 
best an iridescent dream of a departed past, 
— sought, for the mere physical necessities 
of themselves and families, relief from the 
tyrannous oppression of existing economic 
evils. What was to be done? Commerce 
must not stop, the food supply must be 
conserved, and the common people must be 
made self-supporting. 

While these changes had been taking 
place, the school, college, and university 
had become infected with the poison of in- 
ordinate thirst for money. Men whose 
passion in life had been to accumulate 
money merely for the sake of doing so, 
satiated and biases from the long indulgence 
of their appetites, in their search for some- 
thing new to stimulate their jaded senses, 
now began to pour their wealth forth, with 
amazing prodigality, into the laps of edu- 
cational institutions. Proprietary colleges 
and universities sprang up over night. 
Established domiciles of education were 
transformed in a single day. Mil- 
lions upon millions of dollars were 

35 



poured forth in this unparalleled way, 
until, after the passing of two dec- 
ades, the gift of a score of millions by- 
some great capitalist to found a university, 
or to increase the resources of one already 
established, excites scarcely as much public 
interest as the gift of that many thousands 
excited forty years ago. 

Now the use of money, even on so vast 
a scale, for educational purposes, is a laud- 
able one, when considered as a gift merely. 
But the spirit of the age is such that it is 
very difficult to dissociate the money 
from its giver, and, in many instances, the 
only too obvious reason for the gift. Time 
may correct all this, and burn away the 
dross that debases it now. But we are 
compelled to face the living present, and 
reluctantly forced to admit that education, 
which, in the very highest and best sense, 
should be altruistic in spirit, has shown too 
obvious a tendency to be the exact reverse. 

As a result, partly in the hope of ab- 
stracting more money into their treasuries 
from the fortunes of wealthy men, and 
partly for the purpose of self -exploitation, 
colleges and universities at once rushed 
into this industrial breach, promising all 

.36 



sorts of things, — that the curriculum should 
be so modified as to include every phase of 
agriculture, however trivial or minute in 
detail; that trade schools should meet the 
demand for an adequate supply of skilled 
mechanics ; that economic conditions should 
be so carefully inquired into, and the neces- 
sary antidotes for their many ills so care- 
fully and thoroughly administered, that ev- 
erybody would promptly become self-sup- 
porting ; and finally, that the educative pro- 
cess should become so well "standardized" 
as to give, in exact mathematical terms, the 
precise commercial value of any academic 
instructor. So that today certain of our 
great universities bear a striking resem- 
blance to a mediaeval castle; or, possibly 
more accurately, to a large southern planta- 
tion of ante helium days, organized on a 
feudal plan. Here was the proprietor, him- 
self a man of liberal education and culture, 
possibly, but with a discerning eye for his 
own commercial prosperity, providing his 
sons with advantages for education and cul- 
ture. About him were a certain few slaves of 
intelligence, certainly of no education, but 
skilled mechanics or workmen, withal, each 
capable of undertaking the management of 



37 



such department of the plantation as was 
entrusted to him, with a horde of under- 
lings merely to do his bidding, who, if not 
utterly incapable of attaining to any higher 
grade of intelligence, were certainly con- 
tent with the simpler and more elementary 
manner of life. 

So today, in the great universities of the 
country, is to be found first of all, a presi- 
dent, possibly with a real education, but 
chosen for this position, rather because of 
certain qualifications he possesses for in- 
creasing the material equipment of his re- 
spective institution, than for any marked 
ability to develop manhood and woman- 
hood in students. In the student body is 
a small group of workers dedicated to the 
loftier aims of life — who seek ade- 
quate equipment for rendering real 
service to mankind and civilization by 
grounding themselves in the humanities — 
seeking to learn what life is and what it 
really means ; and who are striving to catch 
something of the highest attainment the 
world has afforded the human race, that 
they may interpret it to their fellows in 
turn. These are the people who are scal- 
ing the summits of lofty mountains, 

38 



whence the prospects of life may be seen 
in true perspective, devoid of inequalities 
of vision, to the end that whatever 
professional or other career they may 
ultimately select, they will contribute 
not merely to the material wealth 
of the world, but rather something 
to that intangible, but very real, qual- 
ity of life, which for thousands of years, 
has steadily striven to lift men away from 
the darkness and doubt of materialism to 
the perfect dawn of exalted ideals and aims. 
Then follow a larger group, rooted 
by nature and environment in material- 
istic philosophy — brilliant, perhaps, but 
ambitious — and dedicated to the one 
proposition that the world owes them 
the largest portion of material wealth 
which they can extract, by hook or 
crook, from its well-filled storehouses. 
These are the men, who in law, med- 
icine, and the ministry, bring their pro- 
fessions into disrepute, by their constant 
quest of self-aggrandizement; and who 
in the technical professions and in commer- 
cial life lay the foundations for the huge 
scandals that cast so foul a blot on modern 
business. 

39 



And, finally, there is found a class in 
great numbers who seek some royal road 
to industrial success, in a mistaken effort 
to acquire an education by merely learning 
a trade in one of the many industrial de- 
partments to be found in the back-yards of 
some of our modern universities, ranging 
all the way from blacksmithing and cab- 
inet-making for the men, and dishwashing 
and laundry-work for the women, to rou- 
tine pharmacists and half-baked public 
school teachers, or other weaklings, of both 
sexes. The unsophisticated farmer's boy 
is shown how to plant potatoes without re- 
gard to the phases of the moon, and how to 
feed calves scientifically ; his sister is shown 
a better way to raise chickens, and beans, 
and radishes, and both go home educated, 
as they suppose. 

Now it is perfectly true that all this sort 
of instruction needs to be given. We need 
high-grade mechanics ; the economy of the 
household needs to be regulated in a more 
rational manner; agriculture, in all its 
moods and tenses, needs to be placed upon 
a really scientific basis ; and the entire in- 
dustrial world needs reformation, so as to 
reduce waste, and drudgery, and poverty, 

40 



and crime, all, to the lowest possible terms. 
Honest labour should be dignified and ex- 
alted. But industrial training is not educa- 
tion; and it should not be placed in the 
false position of being so-called; for such 
a course only cheapens both, and defeats, 
ultimately, the laudable and desirable pur- 
poses of both, respectively. In the same 
category, but in a higher scale, may be 
placed training which is purely professional, 
such as teaching, law, medicine, or even 
the ministry. These subjects, pursued on 
professional grounds alone, are utilitarian 
and nothing less. They demand, first of 
all, the broad, deep foundation of a liberal 
education and of a humanitarian culture, 
to enable them to dedicate men and women 
and their professions to the uplift of man- 
kind. 

That this too patent perversion of edu- 
cation to the commercial and utilitarian 
spirit of the age can but profoundly 
affect society, is, alas, not only truth, but 
fact. Its blight is already upon the finest 
flower of our civilization. For nearly a 
generation, the church has deplored its 
slackening grip upon its own membership, 
no less than upon the world at large, — a 

41 



condition, due in no small measure to the 
fact that the ministry no longer attracts 
men of as high intellectual and moral grade 
as formerly — ; and the general spirit of 
commercialism of the present age is threat- 
ening not only the church, but society its- 
self. As wealth and the lust of wealth have 
brought luxury and idleness in their train, 
the integrity of the home — the bulwark of 
society for ages — is menaced, and menaced 
to the extent that some of our thoughtful 
observers of modern life are seriously 
questioning if the home can long endure 
under existing conditions. They are re- 
luctant to make public admission of this 
fact; but that they entertain such views is 
nevertheless true, and there is real cause 
for alarm. 

Without presuming to prophesy what the 
immediate outcome of the present struggle 
will be, we are compelled to admit that 
signs are not wanting that a period of de- 
cadence is setting in; nay, has set in, — a 
decadence such as preceded and ended 
in the downfall of the Roman Empire and 
western civilization, and plunged the 
world into the Dark Ages for a thousand 
years. Then, as now, great material pros- 

42 



pen'ty brought luxurious idleness and vice 
to sap the life of the nation. Then, as 
now, education was subverted to the un- 
worthy ambition of unscrupulous rulers of 
state and wealth. After several centuries, 
the chaotic industrial conditions precipitat^- 
ed by Roman excesses were eventually cor- 
rected through certain influences, among 
which was the rise of the trade 
guilds, which in their essence, closely re- 
sembled industrial education, so-called, to- 
day. Possibly the ultimate solution of our 
own problem will be through some such 
agency, stripped of the defects of its proto- 
type. The most promising tendency in that 
direction today, however, is the silent, but 
phenomenally rapid growth of corporation 
schools, like those of certain of the great 
railroad systems of this country, and of the 
Westinghouse Company of Pittsburgh, for 
example, which seek to provide, in a very 
practical and pointed manner, for the spe- 
cific needs of these respective industries. 
The universities and industrial training 
schools, per se, are unable to meet such 
competition, and will be obliged to recast 
their plans for service and growth, again; 
so that in due course of time, we may con- 

43 



fidently expect a sloughing off to take 
place, and the hideous nightmare of the 
present to give way to the clearer light of 
sanity and reason. The new adjustment 
must be as slow as the present one has been 
swift and headlong. For the deadly poison 
has filled all the veins of society, even to its 
very extremities, and the elimination of the 
venom must necessarily be a prolonged, 
tedious process. 

Of the ultimate outcome, there can be no 
doubt. One is forced to credit human his- 
tory. That moves in certain cycles, in har- 
mony with established law. An era of ad- 
vancement is followed by a corresponding 
period of retrogression. The upward 
march of civilization may be liken- 
ed to the progress of a tiny ant 
along the closely wound coils of rope 
about a gigantic, inclined spar, where one 
half of every turn of the rope points down- 
ward, and the other half points upward, 
but a given segment of each turn reaches a 
little higher up than the corresponding seg- 
ment of the coil next below. Moreover, the 
change from the upward to the downward, 
or from the downward to the upward bent, 
may be so slight as to be imperceptible to 

44 



the minute traveler, who finds that it is only 
by looking back upon what to him is a con- 
siderable distance that he has covered, that 
he can be sure of his ascent or descent, and 
from a far prospect only can he see that, 
even in his descent, he has made progress 
over the preceding cycle. 

So with humanity, every great epoch of 
progress in its history has been both pre- 
ceded and followed by a corresponding de- 
cline, — long imperceptible perhaps, but none 
the less true. Such convolutions have 
marked the ascent of man ever since the 
dawn of history, and in the light of that 
fact, well may we expect them to continue 
to the end of time. 

Along with the acquisition of knowl- 
edge comes a conscious growth of 
national power, or sovereignty, which, to 
mankind, is at first a tonic, then a stimu- 
lant, and, finally, a deadly narcotic, stealing 
away the sobriety and poise of nations no 
less than of individuals; and, by impercep- 
tible degrees, lulling its victims into a de- 
licious, sensuous, poisonous slumber, so 
deep and so prolonged that nothing short 
of the crash of long-impending doom can 
rouse them. 

45 



The far-famed Alexandrian Empire that 
stretched from the queenly Adriatic to the 
distant jungles on the farther banks of the 
Indus, and from the mountain fastnesses of 
Macedonia and Thrace to the burning 
sands beyond the Edenic valley of the Nile, 
had crumbled into dissolving dust and the 
name of its conquering hero become a mere 
memory before the dawn of the Christian 
Era ; mighty Rome, no less than her purpled 
Caesars, sank into lethal oblivion, and car- 
ried with her, into utter destruction, a civ- 
ilization of a thousand years ; and, upon 
the ashes of that millennium, we have 
builded another civilization, of a greater 
and more magnificent grandeur. But well 
may we pause, and, after a long silent 
retrospect, solemnly question whether the 
glory of our pride, too, is not to be swal- 
lowed up in a mighty cataclysm. Surely 
we can do no less than patiently to study 
these restless forebodings that so patently 
characterize society today, and strive with 
all the power of our being to apply the cor- 
rective influences required to overcome the 
decadent tendencies of this generation. 

That there is a rising feeling of alarm 
over our present conditions is a most hope- 

46 



ful sign. From the very inception of the 
commercialism of education, and church, 
and society at large, there have been those 
who have viewed this movement with man- 
ifest apprehension. This class of thoughtful 
observers, though small even yet, has grad- 
ually grown in numbers, until today it finds 
within its ranks not only educators, but law- 
yers, physicians, clergymen, and even cold- 
blooded men in commercial and industrial 
life. In Germany, for example, a country 
whose social and political fabric is ground- 
ed upon a materialistic philosophy, that 
dictates utilitarian training for the masses, 
and reserves education and culture, in the 
real sense, for the aristocracy, this alarm 
has been manifest for some years, and 
even among her so-called hardheaded busi- 
ness men. The unsuccessful assault upon 
the humanities in Oxford University, Eng- 
land's most ancient stronghold of learn- 
ing, is cause for hearty congratulation. 
In our own country, the best known in- 
cident indicating a possible reaction, and 
an ultimate return to the humanities, is 
that of a movement of the alumni of Am- 
herst College, which is resulting in 
a radical change in the curriculum of that 

47 



well-known institution. While this action 
leaves much to be desired, it is a happy 
augury of the future. Among the larger 
colleges and universities, however, there is 
no apparent sense of danger yet. 

But, after all, it is the small college to 
which we must turn as the bulwark of our 
strength against the pseudo-rationalism 
which has invaded modern society. The 
large college and the university, almost, if 
not quite, without exception, have become 
so entangled in the meshes of this false 
philosophy that they will require a prolong- 
ed struggle to shake themselves free from 
its blighting influence. Nor can help be 
expected from the free public schools and 
the state universities, because they are too 
subservient to the demands of the material- 
istic calls of the unthinking proletariat to 
permit the heads of such institutions to fol- 
low the courageous dictates of their own 
consciences. 

But the small college, — one that is really 
free and independent, as well as small, one 
which has not entangled itself in unholy 
alliances to obtain endowment and equip- 
ment, one which has not sought to attract 
patronage by questionable means for un- 



worthy ends, — is, what any college or uni- 
versity irrespective of whether it be large 
or small ought to be, — free and independ- 
ent. For that reason, the very fact that 
it is small, is, in the present exigency, at 
least, an inherent advantage. Its strug- 
gle for existence and growth carries with 
it a very real appreciation of the service 
it renders both the community which pat- 
ronizes it, and the procession of earnest, 
serious-minded young men and young 
women that files through its halls. 

Nor should the small college minimize 
its faith in its own influence. Oftentimes 
it is even the single individual who inspires 
the world, and fixes the destiny of man- 
kind. Pass by, if you please, the mighty 
Viking warrior who has so profoundly in- 
fluenced the millennium just closing, and 
look back almost to the beginning of the 
preceding millennial period, and behold 
another man, faring up and down the hills 
and vales of a small Roman province on 
the eastern shore of the Mediterranean. 
He is the most perfect example, in 
all the history of the world, of that educa- 
tion I plead for. His training was sym- 
metrical in all its parts — physical, intel- 

49 



lectual, and spiritual. At the age of twelve 
years, his intellectual grasp of all that was 
difficult and recondite in the teachings 
of the sages of his people, and his keen 
spiritual insight into, and his broad and 
deep sympathy with, social conditions, en- 
abled him to interpret his knowledge of 
human nature and human society in such 
a manner as to confound the most learned 
doctors of the law ; and when subsequently 
at the age of thirty years, he set out upon 
his life-work of service to humanity, so 
mature was his equipment, so well ground- 
ed was his faith in the duty whereunto he 
was called, and so profoundly was he dedi- 
cated to this mission in every fibre of all 
his being, that, in the short space of three 
years, he created a revolution which has 
persisted through all the shifting changes 
of nineteen centuries of world-wide history, 
a revolution whose genius has ever been 
the hope and comfort and cheer of man- 
kind, and made Christianity a dynamic 
force throughout the earth. 

For a quarter century, Salem College has 
stood with outstretched hands, beckoning 
the young men and young women of this 
republic of mountaineers to come and 

SO 



drink from the cup of wisdom, and wait- 
ing throngs have hearkened to that call. 
She has been loyal to the faith she has pro- 
fessed. Her devoted perceptors, them- 
selves, first drank deeply from the cup 
which they, afterward, have held to the 
lips of their disciples. Beneath its golden 
brim is inscribed a legend which betokens 
its draughts. Pause and read: 

"And whosoever of you will be the chiefest, 
shall be the servant of all." 

But her work is not done; her fight is 
not finished; her course is only just begun; 
she is anointed with the oil of sacrifice, and 
consecrated to the destiny ordained by her 
founders. Today, still in the first flush of the 
glory of her youth, this college stands at the 
threshold of a magnificent opportunity. 
Reared upon soil that has been stained by 
the bloody footprints of devoted service to 
humanity — a trail of footprints that ex- 
tends, for a thousand years, all the way 
from the embarkation of Hrolf, the majestic 
Norseman, upon his voyage of adventure, 
to this spot, whither his lineal descendant, 
of kingly physique and fiery zeal, led a 
company, more than six score years ago, to 
establish new homes for themselves amid 



Si 



the freedom of the wilderness — a wilder- 
ness speedily transformed into comfortable, 
hospitable homes dedicated to the faith and 
mission of Palestine's Nazarene, and 
where, but a generation ago, another son 
of the warrior from the German Sea, his 
life also dedicated to the uplift of human- 
ity, performed the greatest service ever yet 
rendered by any one man in all that part 
of the state which constitutes the geo- 
graphical setting of this temple of learn- 
ing; reared upon such soil, I repeat, amid 
the scenes of achievements which bear wit- 
ness to the nobility of character that dis- 
tinguishes the people who first made this 
institution possible and then tenderly nurs- 
ed it through all the anxious, precarious 
years of its early existence, growing slow- 
ly, but surely, into such sturdiness 
of stature and character as to in- 
spire generations yet unborn with lofty 
zeal and purpose. 

Salem is face to face with a tre- 
mendous responsibility, — a responsibility 
she can not escape if she would, nor 
would she if she could. A flood of 
golden opportunities is rising at her 
portals in portentous volume — opportuni- 

52 



ties which she can not afford to ignore 
or lose. Upon the bosom of this flood is 
borne her destiny. If in its physical, in- 
tellectual, and spiritual fibre, the fabric of 
her walls is strong enough to withstand 
the mighty pressure to which they are sub- 
jected; if the material of which they are 
constructed is drawn from the storehouse of 
enduring ages ; if the walls are rooted deep 
down upon the solid rock of unselfish de- 
votion to the eternal verities of humanity; 
if thus imbedded, and then reared by hands 
kept clean from the grime of unworthy 
motive; then this college, strong in con- 
scious rectitude of purpose, guided by a 
discerning judgment of the elemental qual- 
ities of life, no less than of the perfect, 
delicate flower of its highest culture and 
humanity, will be, through all the changing 
years, an impregnable fortress against the 
powers of ignorance and darkness and de- 
cay,— a beacon light to guide the foot- 
steps of wayfaring humanity, and to impel 
to supreme effort, to noble purpose, and 
to lofty aims. So standing, she will be- 
come an enduring monument with a living 
voice, a law and an oracle to the throngs 
that hang upon her words, inspiring them 



53 



FE3 6 1914 



to zealous devotion, to high aspirations and 
determined endeavor ; and the ever-widen- 
ing circles of her influence, following swift- 
ly, one upon another, ever increasing in vol- 
ume and power, ultimately will extend to 
the confines of the world, and bring joy 
and hope and comfort and peace, with pur- 
ity of life, strength of character, mag- 
nanimity of courage, and glorious achieve- 
ment, to successive multitudes through 
coming centuries. 



54 



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